


The Honest Night

by goldstraw



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 1950s, Declarations Of Love, Dreams, F/M, Hardboiled Detective, in the style of raymond chandler, noir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 17:37:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2660657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldstraw/pseuds/goldstraw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are blonde and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays… There is the small cute blonde who cheeps and twitters, and the big statuesque blonde who straight-arms you with an ice-blue glare.</p>
<p>	Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Honest Night

**Author's Note:**

> My small attempt at writing something in the vivid, simile heavy style of the incomparable Raymond Chandler. I hope you enjoy it!

There was a weight on her: heavy, warm, alive. She’d been in enough scraps to know what a body felt like. But this one wasn’t fighting her, wasn’t breaking her nose again— Her broad hands stretched to reach for it, to understand what was happening. In the darkness, she touched skin, rounded muscles on lean shoulders— and as the body moved closer, she could feel the brush of stubble, smell the oily tang in unruly hair. Fingers hovered and hesitated, dark pupils searching for a clue. Then a soft sensation below her ear. A kiss. Another was given to her, closer to her lips, and another, pressed gently on her mouth.

She half-consciously tried to move herself away. Kisses were always ploys to make others laugh, to cause her pain. Her tears seemed to shore up egos. But everything was unbearably familiar, from the way a hand clutched at her waist to the way a lock of hair kept slipping over a forehead. It was a thought she tried to interrogate as hard as she had done the diner waitresses and motel owners about a tall girl with auburn hair. After months now she knew what an honest answer was, but this one wouldn’t be rubbed out or pinned down. She knew this body, this kissing man. She _knew_ him. _Jaime?_ The answer that appeared to her couldn’t be the right one. It just couldn’t.

A touch on her chin brought her back to him, a smile touching his lips as he so easily with certain, uncompromising efforts made her mouth his own. Entranced by the vision that she knew was a lie, she did not notice his fingers marking their way down from her hair, across her jaw, to her pyjamas. He was unbuttoning them, exposing her naked skin to the cold room, the heat of his mouth, the rub of careful teeth across her breasts. She breathed in sharply, awestruck. His tongue swirled, pulling at her nipples, sending lightning bolts to innocent muscles. Her toes curled. Her hips bucked. Her fingers clutched at his undershirt, the cotton feeling rough against the hair on his forearms. It was all so unreal, no more so that when she reached upwards and pulled the shirt over his head. She could have sworn he laughed just then, the rumble escaping his mouth in a rush of hot air against flesh. His kisses had dropped lower, her stomach swooping in return. Her mind set up a rhythm all of its own, a beating thought to match her racing heart. She knew him. She wanted him. She knew him. She wanted him… _Jaime. Jaime!_

****

The girl wrenched into the night, like a cat meeting a bathful of water it hadn’t intended to slip into. She was breathing hard and looked more alive than I’d seen her for weeks. Wonderful what a little excitement could bring out. I had a funny feeling that whatever I’d been doing to her must have been pretty forward for a nice girl like her to dream of but she’d seem to have coped alright. I half-wondered if I should be jealous of imaginary-me and invite him to come outside and wrestle in the parking lot for her, but I don’t think she would have appreciated the joke just at that moment. She sat there, looking back at me on the couch I had so gallantly offered to take that evening, her frozen attitude telling me that she’d very much cottoned on to the fact that I’d been listening and watching, brought up from a dead sleep by the racket she’d made.  She looked desperate for a hole to jump into, a magician to vanish her away from the situation, but hell, life wasn’t that easy or we would have all jumped a long time ago.

I sighed and sat up, fumbling around for my cigarettes like a blind man after a dime. “Bad dream?” I asked slowly as the match flared.

“Yes,” Brienne lied.

I snorted my disbelief. “Oh? What about?”

“I can’t remember.” I’d always seen straight through her, but I still knew she would deny it.

A pause. I cocked my head at her. “Pity.”

She stared, trying to warn me like she’d do when my mouth was about to get us beaten up or worse. “Don’t.”

“Doll. A man hears his name said like that and he takes notice.”

“I urge you to forget it,” she pleaded. I could tell she was red as a tomato just by the hiccups in her voice.

“Might as well ask the impossible,” I said as I stood and walked to her, before changing my mind and turning on my heel to stalk to the window. I looked out at the neon spilled dive of a neighbourhood and took a drag. “Doll… Brienne. I-I…” I faded out.

A small hard voice forced its way out of her, like her heart had sunk into her belly. “You don’t need to protect my feelings… I’m sorry I embarrassed you.”

The cigarette stilled half way to my mouth, and I turned, cast in shadow. I was dog-tired, but I couldn’t go back to sleep after she’d woken me like that. I wasn’t a saint. And neither was she by the sound of it. “You think I’m _embarrassed_? Embarrassment is for _boys_ , doll. I _enjoyed_ it.”

She frowned at me, like I was playing the fool. I didn’t laugh.

“A little…unusual as a declaration, I grant you. But no less charming for all that…”

I waited to see if she would say anything, but there was only a police siren wailing. I hoped it wasn’t for us. I should have known better than to expect an answer. The dame was as quiet as a mouse unless she was forced to say something. For weeks after she’d stepped through my door, it was only my fine insults that provoked anything but silent contempt from her. For all that, I knew I’d be as dead and buried as my cop career without her quiet, stubborn honour.

I tried again. “What if I told you it’d be a crying shame to never hear that voice of yours again?”

“Jaime—“

“Doll, believe me I’m being honest here. God knows I’m not a good man, not worth the mess I’ve dragged you through, but you—“

Brienne let out a sound of incomprehension. “No, Jaime, you—“

“Hell, I will not do this in the goddamned dark—” I snapped, furious at getting caught up in my own words like a kid asking someone for prom.

I started towards her, reaching for the bedside table to stub out my cigarette with such ferocity the chipped ashtray rattled before I banged on the light. It beamed into the room, making Brienne flinch away as if she were a rabbit about to meet its maker. When she looked up, I was pacing and muttering like a mad man.

I felt as helplessness as a kitten, my memories standing tall and strong and about ready to snap my neck. I’d been the girl’s age and about as head over heels. Now it was twenty years later and all I had got for my trouble was a hatred for liars and deception. Bright red lips idly whispered in my ear about the sheer foolishness of me trying to find another who might unlock my heart. I muttered back that this blonde was doing just fine with that endeavour. I stopped chit-chatting when I realised I’d been staring at Brienne’s wide-eyed face and scaring her. I told the voice to get out and stay out.

Brienne crossed her arms when I sat next to her, as if I could undo her buttons with my eyes. I didn’t need to. I’d been alongside her long enough to catch glimpses of most of her body, skin as vulnerable and pale as a baby’s where the sun hadn’t reached, hair blonde as hell. I’d seen pins as long as you like, shoulders a quarterback would be proud of, barely anything to fill even the smallest brassiere. She wasn’t the typical broad a man might look at in the street, but she had my attention.

“They say to never fall in love with the client, but I guess we’ve broken enough rules to let this one go by too.” I tried a nonchalant smile. “What do you say, darling?”

She took her sweet time trying to come up with a word or two and I watched her sky blue eyes turn stormy. Her eyes told me everything she wouldn’t or couldn’t say. They were as graceful as her presence in a room wasn’t. Framed by long blonde eyelashes that fluttered with every thought she had, they lit up her plain and careworn face. In the dark, when I’d listened to her murmur and moan and the blood began to move around in me, I’d wanted to be the man who made them blow wide open. Nothing like the shy gaze she had now, flickering like the power was about to go out.

I felt a surge of adrenaline, the same rush of expectation and awareness as I felt when I drew my gun to save her life, pulled the trigger and heard the deep crack and thump of slugs peppering the brute, giving us a chance to run. I leant forward, took her by her cheek and pulled her into a kiss. She whimpered in surprise, but I waited for her to catch up and soon her own hands were pulling me closer, her mouth hot and needy and then she stopped, breathing hard, cheeks bright pink.

“I don’t want anything to change,” she whispered, trembling and flustered. “I mean, we’ve been through a whole lot and you’ve become everything to me—“

I swallowed a laugh and raised my eyebrows in mock astonishment. “I have? I wouldn’t have guessed, doll.”

She huffed her way through her awkwardness, fingers lifting and dropping on my skin as if she realised on and off that touching me was not all that proper. There ain’t a way to explain how it felt to be treated like a fine piece of art by a girl who dreamed of me.  I was in love and I didn’t care who knew it.  

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews would be swell!


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